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The Levelator 2.1.2 Works in El Capitan

A few months ago I wrote about how to make an audio tool called The Levelator work in OS X 10.11 El Capitan (see “How to Revive The Levelator in El Capitan,” 29 September 2015). Despite not having been updated since 2012, The Levelator has remained popular with podcasters because it’s a free app that ensures audio files use a consistent loudness, something that’s often hard to achieve with group podcasts and between episodes.

The fix was conceptually simple, if a little fussy to achieve, revolving around moving a file from within The Levelator’s application package to another spot within OS X’s Unix directory structure so it could be found.

Happily, the necessary changes were sufficiently minor that The Levelator’s developer, Bruce Sharpe, reopened the app’s code long enough to address the problem. The Conversations Network has now released version 2.1.2 of The Levelator (a 19.8 MB download), which works without modification in El Capitan. There are no other changes.

This doesn’t mean that The Levelator will receive future updates, however. Doug Kaye, Executive Director of The Conversations Network, told me that they have no further plans for The Levelator, adding, “We consider it a finished tool that does what it does well. We’re glad to see it used successfully by so many people and glad we were able to release this fix.”

Kudos to Bruce and Doug for ensuring that The Levelator can continue to serve the needs of podcasters and others who need to ensure that spoken audio has a consistent volume. Now if only Apple would build it into iTunes U to regularize volume levels automatically.